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OVERNIGHT HEALTH: Obama says a majority can keep their plans

President Obama on Wednesday for the first time defended his claim that every American would be able to keep their health insurance plans under ObamaCare. Obama accused his opponents of “grossly misleading” the public as Republicans seize on reports that hundreds of thousands of people have received letters notifying them that their plans will be canceled by the end of the year.

Obama said Republicans weren't giving the full picture even as he acknowledged that some people will not be able to keep their health plans under the new law. GOP accusations that Obama misled the public by insisting that people could keep their healthcare plans under ObamaCare have added to mounting problems for the healthcare law’s rollout. Justin Sink at The Hill reports.

BREAKING:Vice President Biden is the latest high-level administration official to apologize for the botched healthcare rollout.

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“We assumed that it as up and ready to run,” Biden told CNN. “But the good news is, although it’s not and we apologize for that, we’re confident that by the end of November it will be, and there will still be plenty of time for people to register and get online."

BREAKING:White House spokesman Josh Earnest offered a lengthy defense of Sebelius en route to President Obama’s healthcare speech in Boston. Per the White House pool report:

“The President has complete confidence in Secretary Sebelius. She has been responsible, as you pointed out, for the broader implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That also means that she’s responsible for the construction of some of these consumer protections that have gone into place that have gone into place very smoothly. She’s responsible for the policy work that’s been done to construct the individual marketplaces that are offering a wide variety of options to people who don’t currently have insurance so they can purchase insurance for themselves and their family, and that they can do so at an affordable price, and that they can get a quality level of benefits out of it.

So she certainly is responsible for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and she took responsibility for many of the problems that are evident with the website. But she also deserves credit for the other aspects of the Affordable Care Act implementation process that has gone well.”

Standing up for the boss: President Obama’s claim that people could keep their old health plans under ObamaCare dominated questioning at Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s committee hearing. The White House has struggled to defend President Obama’s 2009 claim as thousands of people receive notifications that their insurance companies are dropping their plans. Sebelius repeated the administration’s argument that, if people are losing their plans, it is because of insurance companies and not the new healthcare law. Jonathan Easley at The Hill reports.

BREAKING:The White House weighs in on Sebelius’s congressional hearing. More from Earnest’s gaggle:

“I have not had a chance to talk to [President Obama] about whether he watched the testimony today, and I didn’t have a chance to watch it before either. But others at the White House did have a chance to watch portions of her testimony and thought she did a very good job of explaining to the American public and to the relevant congressional committee that has oversight over HHS about the efforts that are underway to fix the website and the efforts that are underway to continue the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. to make sure that, for the first time, people all across the country, or at least for millions of people all across the country, that they’ll have access to quality, affordable health insurance.”